On Friday, Microsoft announced its slate of free Xbox Games with Gold titles for May. Xbox One and Xbox 360 owners will get a mix of platforming and co-op fun with a healthy dose of Star Wars thrown in.

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams – Director’s Cut will kick off the free Games with Gold offerings for May. The Xbox One platformer will be part of the program through the end of the month. Meanwhile, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II will also be available at the start of the month but will rotate out after May 15.

On May 16, Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris will be available to download free through June 15. LEGO Stars: The Complete Saga will join the free fun on the same date and will be available until May 31.

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams – Director’s Cut

[Image by Black Forest Games]

Gamers who love a good platformer will want to check out the Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams – Director’s Cut. The title features 33 levels that the hero, Giana, can switch between the real world and the dream world to traverse. This is a re-release of the 2012 Xbox 360 version that includes a new “Rise of the Owlverlord” adventure. It received decent reviews on Metacritic, averaging around an 80 out of 100 score between the PS4 and Xbox One.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

[Image by LucasArts]

LucasArts played a game of “What If”with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II that left many fans of the original game scratching their head. The gameplay is improved over the original, which was also recently a Games with Gold free offering, but the storyline leaves much to be desired. The change in direction was so drastic, it earned a 61 aggregate Metacritic score when it was released in 2010.

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris

[Image by Square Enix]

Co-op fans will want to get their friends together for Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris. The game supports up to four players battling together and solving puzzles to make their way through an ancient Egyptian temple to stop Set from enslaving humanity. The game received mixed reviews on Metacritic as there are some glitches, and it didn’t feel quite as new as the first.

LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga

[Image by LucasArts]

Traveller’s Tales reached peak charm with LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga. The title combined the prequel and original trilogies together for an extensive amount of drop-in/drop-out co-op playtime with friends. The 10-year-old game is likely showing its age now despite the 80 Metacritic score, but it is still worth a free pickup for parents and kids.

As a reminder, some April Games with Gold titles are still available to download for free. Telltale’s The Walking Dead: Season Two will be available until May 15. Meanwhile, the backward compatible Assassin’s Creed Revelations will hang around until the end of April, so grab it soon.

As the Inquisitrpreviously covered, Xbox One manages backward-compatibility by emulating the entire Xbox 360 operating system. This allows Xbox 360 games to run on the Xbox One without any special coding or other workarounds. The major hurdles remaining are the licensing agreements with development studios and publishers to allow the games to be played on the Xbox One and listed for sale on the Xbox Store for the console.

Following that, testing to make sure the game runs correctly on the Xbox One appears to be a time-consuming task. Microsoft has to test each game from beginning to end to ensure the emulator runs the title correctly. This can take hundreds of hours depending on the title.

Additionally, Microsoft uses an Xbox Uservoice group to gauge interest in which titles to add to the Xbox One backward compatibility library. Users can suggest and vote up which games they would like to see supported.